


Sick With It

by DC_Derringer



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, assumed major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 14:31:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5500901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DC_Derringer/pseuds/DC_Derringer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry always knew that Eggsy could die on a mission. Didn't make him anymore prepared for it though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sick With It

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for [Captrainrogers](http://captrainrogers.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing my fic Ace of Harts. Thanks for all the help!

“It’s been a month, sir,” Merlin said, though with little hope. Two weeks was the usual cutoff. Three was reasonable. A month was taking it too far.

“He might have gone north,” Harry said, very deliberately ignoring Merlin as he looked over the geographical map projected over his desk. “There are passes through the mountains, here and here. He would have headed for high ground-”

“There’s towns along the way,” Merlin said, pointing out the structures. “Phones. Internet. He would have contacted us,” Merlin said gently. But he’d said it before, too. Harry hadn’t listened then.

“Then they’ve taken him north,” Harry said firmly, his voice tightening, hardening. 

“There’s no they, Arthur,” Merlin said. “Galahad did his job. Took them all out in the explosion. No survivors-”

“Then there was someone else we didn’t anticipate!” Harry shouted. “They had alliances, ties with other organizations. They have Eggsy, and they’ve taken him somewhere and-”

“He’s dead, Harry,” Merlin said, though it pained him to say it. “You know he is and no amount of arguing will make it not true. We know he got caught in the explosion. The last ping from his glasses showed no vital signs.”

Harry stared at Merlin, scowling, trembling with anger. His mouth tightened, small and bunched up, but then let out a gasp of breath, shaky and unbelievably vulnerable. He took a step back and slumped into his chair. It creaked loudly, bearing his weight admirably. 

“I can’t…” Harry’s voice trembled and he shook his head, started again. “How can I survive without him?”

“Go home for starters,” Merlin said. He reached across Harry’s desk and closed out the map. “You need some rest. Then tomorrow, we’ll drink to Galahad, and we’ll start the proposal process. Like we always do.”

~

Harry went home, as ordered. Merlin told him to sleep. He drank instead. Two fingers of scotch, then two more, then two more after that. He finished a bottle and went on to the next until he was a blurry mess on the couch, numb on the outside, but the ache inside him bloomed unimpeded. He had kept it at bay for a month, focusing on the search, following thin leads, barking orders at his staff. But there was nothing to keep it back anymore and all he had was the knowledge that Eggsy, his Eggsy, had died in the field.

It was a fear they all lived with. Constant, and maddening if you weren’t careful. Any mission could be the last, and it wasn’t so bad when you knew it was for a good cause. To save lives. To save the world. But it was harder when you had someone to come home to, who knew exactly what could happen. So Harry and Eggsy always said goodbye carefully. No spats left unsettled. No angry words before leaving. Always a smile and a kiss so nothing would be left to question. Not like the time Harry had left, anger on his lips, and Eggsy left to mourn him for weeks, thinking Harry had not cared for him. Hadn’t loved him deeply for himself. 

Harry’s own experience had driven his search. For weeks he’d been unconscious in a hospital in Kentucky, with broken glasses, and no one knew where he was. Surely this could have been the case with Eggsy? Except, after V-Day, everything had been a mess, the world itself, and Kingsman especially. With all their resources in disorder, no wonder they hadn’t found Harry right away. But now, Kingsman was at its peak, stronger than ever before, but every ounce of that power had not dredged Eggsy up because he was well and truly gone.

It was past midnight when Harry dragged himself upstairs. Some of his butterfly collections suffered his staggering through the halls, but the shattering glass barely pierced his senses. The stairs themselves were a small matter, but his misery overcame his embarrassment as he ascended with his hands more often on the stairs than not. He collapsed into bed and was instantly surrounded by Eggsy’s smell. He threw Eggsy’s pillow away from him, knocking over his lamp, but ignoring that shatter as well. He wrapped himself in the blankets, still in his suit, rumpled, drunk, filled with pain, while sleep took him over, the barest reprieve. 

~

Morning came soon, and Harry was unperturbed by the sun blazing through his windows with the blankets wrapped around his head. But the banging and yelling at his front door certainly woke him. He was not pleased by the noise, nor his own state.

“Harry!” he could hear Merlin yelling from downstairs, out below his bedroom window where his front door was. “Harry! You fucking idiot! You better not be dead in there! Open this goddamned door!”

Harry took his bearings and noticed more cacophony in his room. His cellphone was buzzing nonstop, and his glasses were pinging repeatedly, trying to get his attention. Even his landline phone let out a bursting ring, startling him and making his head ache. Harry finally reached for his tablet and remotely opened his front door. “Thank fuck!” he heard Merlin exclaim at the same time his front door burst open.

Merlin ran up the stairs, hardly pausing as his feet crinkled over shattered glass and then burst into Harry’s room. “You idiot! I was worried sick!” Merlin shouted, and Harry winced.

“Softer…” Harry groaned as a scotch induced headache flared up harder, bringing clarity to every other ache in his body, and the roiling nausea in his stomach.

“Christ Harry, I thought you’d…” Merlin swallowed the word, biting his own lip because he didn’t want to say it.

“Miserable. Not suicidal,” Harry grumbled out. He smacked his lips to wet them but made no success. The glass of water he usually kept beside the bed was gone, broken on the floor next to his lamp. He’d have to buy a new one. “What are you doing here?” Harry asked as he considered all the fuss Merlin had made to get to him.

“He’s alive,” Merlin said, his voice almost giddy.

“Who?” Harry asked, muddled.

“Eggsy. Eggsy’s alive, you idiot.”

Disbelief washed over Harry, because he’d already had a dozen dreams like this, half-conscious on his desk, only to see them shatter as wakefulness overcame him. “Don’t…” he murmured, waving the likely dream away. 

“Harry, I’m serious!” Merlin said, gripping Harry’s shoulders to shake him. “He’s been unconscious in a village, to the south, no phones. No one knew who he was. He’s alive. I swear it.”

The disbelief receded, warily, and unbridled joy welled up in his belief. Tears of joy blurred his vision. Harry stood up suddenly from the bed, ready to run to HQ, but his head swam, and his gut lurched, and to his credit, he did not actually throw up on Merlin. Though he did splash his shoes a bit.

~

A few hours later, Harry was showed, properly dressed in a clean, pressed suit, and filled to the gills with every hangover remedy Merlin knew. So, he was standing mostly upright in Kingsman’s hangar and didn’t quite stink of scotch unless you were really up close with him. If he didn’t move, he looked presentable.

The rescue jet came in, just a few minutes ahead of schedule even, and Harry had to resist running across the tarmac. He waited for the door to open, doubt lingering in the back of his mind for every second until, there. Eggsy, upright, but only just. His leg was bound in a cast, and bandages covered half of his face. Under his clothes, there were even more, for scrapes and scratches, broken ribs, and a swath of skin damaged by fire, according to the report that had preceded him.

But despite all that, Eggsy saw him, and he smiled, and Harry’s heart finally sang with relief, and he gave in to lurch across the tarmac and help Eggsy down the stairs and not let him go again for a very, very long time.


End file.
